MONDAY MUSINGS: THE PANDEMIC'S FUTURE IN TOOBWORLD

The pandemic brought an early end to many TV series this season; many came close to completing their storylines.  But with shows foregoing the last two episodes and cobbling together new conclusions from existing footage (‘The Flash’) – or in the case of ‘Blacklist’, resorting to animation to complete an arc.

It’s made me wonder what will happen when TV shows do come back with a new season, hopefully in the Fall.  Will they all acknowledge what happened this Spring? After all, there were shows twenty years ago which never made any indication that the 9/11 attacks happened.

(I’m not sure if it was ever addressed when ‘100 Centre Street’ returned for a second season in October of 2001.  I can understand if those episodes produced before September couldn’t shoehorn even just a reference to the tragedy, obviously.  But it wasn’t cancelled until March of 2002; Team Toobworld, let me know – did they ever acknowledge what happened just a few blocks away?)

With warnings that there will be a resurgence of Covid-19 in the Fall, coupled with flu season ramping up, will we be seeing Life in the Otto household of Norwalk, Ct.  putting on face masks before the kids head off to school on ‘American Housewife’?  Will ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’ have to grapple with the prospect of prison being a possible death sentence for the suspects they bring in? Would it lead to arguments that it doesn’t matter?

But there are current shows out there which won’t have to deal with the spectra of the coronavirus… because they all take place in the Past.

Here is my Super Six List of my favorite current TV shows which will remain unaffected by COVID-19 within their “reality”….

1] YOUNG SHELDON
2] OUTLANDER
3] MURDOCH MYSTERIES
4] ENDEAVOUR
5] FATHER BROWN
6] THE GOLDBERGS/SCHOOLED

I would have liked to have included ‘Doctor Who’ in this list, but then the Time Lord doesn’t just travel back in Time; the Doctor visits the Future as well as the Present Time.  Will they be addressing the pandemic when the series eventually returns?

I’m not considering TV shows which are set in the Far Future, like ‘Doctor Who’ sometimes is.  Like everybody else, I’m hoping we’ll eventual be free of this coronavirus.  But people in the Future will have lost family members, friends, occupations to COVID-19.

And now I’m wondering how they’ll address the pandemic in their past.  They can’t very well claim that it was eradicated; it might be with us in some form forever.

No doubt about it – it will be an interesting TV season come the Fall!